Work group „Alpha-Beta“, Romanian Athenaeum, Palace of the Parliament and green peperoni’s as a starter for lunch.
I had the great opportunity to visit Bucharest in Romania, because of an invitation of the IEIE – International Education Information Exchange e.V., Stuttgart/Germany, to join one of the session of the work group „Alpha-Beta“ as an expert for mobile learning. „Alpha-Beta“ is an EU-Project in the Socrates Programme dealing with „new methods for services towards illiterates in adult education“. With 35 °C it was really hot in Bucharest, but we stay in the air-conditioned and very nice hotel „Marshal“ :o)
Interesting findings of the work group „Alpha-Beta“ were that 52% of the illiterate persons think of mobile phones as learning device and that the penetration of the illiterate persons with mobile phones is above social average.
In the afternoons I went for a downtown walk. I saw e.g. Romanian Athenaeum, Piata Revolutiei, Cercul Militar National, Library of the University of Bucharest and the enormous Palace of the Parliament. The hotel „Marshal“ was not far away from the american embassy which was very good guarded. But I was very surprised how many minders guarded the iranian embassy. There must be something going on there, because other embassies, that I saw today, didn’t have so much obviously protection.